PVC Review: Post-Production Management with ShotRunner

Over on PVC, Mark Christiansen is profiling two online post-production management tool alternatives to manipulating Basecamp templates that are in beta and already used in production environments, Shotgun and ShotRunner. His first review is Online Post-Production Management with ShotRunner.

Those apps and a few alternatives were mentioned briefly here in May in Shotgun, Shotrunner + more production scheduling & collaboration. Introductory movies are available for most of these solutions aimed at review & approval and management.

The Basics of Screenwriting

FilmmakerIQ mentions AFI’s The Basics of Screenwriting (hosted on Fathom):

"In this seminar from the American Film Institute, Amy Dunkleberger guides both novice and professional writers through the creation of an engaging screenplay. The seminar clearly and concisely leads you through the creation of an effective premise, compelling characters and a structure for your work. Throughout the sessions, writing techniques, presentation do's and don'ts, screenplay terminology and film clips juxtaposed with their shooting scripts help you develop your initial whim into your final screenplay."

FilmmakerIQ has related posts too (scroll down), like What’s Wrong With The Three Act Structure? -- and of course there's news & analysis from John August and Mystery Man on Film, and more on Wikipedia (Pre-production, Screenplay, Screenwriting) & all over.

There's already a market filled with script-oriented apps like Celtx (open source pre-production software), Final Draft, Gorilla, and others, as well as the forthcoming Adobe Story.

Also, AFI has short intro videos on filmmaking at ScreenNation Learn. Here's Scriptwriting (AFI's Lights, Camera, Education!):

Shotgun, Shotrunner + more production scheduling & collaboration

Here's a tour of a new web-based media production tracking and collaboration system called Shotgun. More info and links can be found via Final Cut User, which has a backlog of updates queued.



Another system recently twittered is Shotrunner, which has some QuickTime tutorials. The blog vfx.netzfilter posted some other options found in research Research on visual effects production databases and Random Links - Visual Effects Pipeline Design and Production Databases.

Update: VFX Nexus is another entrant in this niche. "It's specifically designed for tracking shots and enabling collaboration between artists and supervisors, allowing both a clear view of the status of their projects, shots and tasks at all times. This ideology - coupled with report creating, deep search abilities and customized views - is our version of Project Management." Here's a summary:


Update 2: There's a number of newer services that could branch into this niche too, even if they mostly do review and approval: Xprove, CineSync, FilmFlip, PIXSytem, MediaBatch, and MESoft. Let's hope someone does a proper roundup that compares these options and includes other software like Celtx.

Adobe Story: peeks only until late 2009

Adobe Story, a collaborative scriptwriting tool, is expected to be available on Adobe Labs in late 2009. The Adobe Education Technologies blog is offering a sneak peek with New Adobe Story and the Future of Script Writing.

Also, there's bit more at Millimeter Magazine: Adobe Story Targets Screenwriters (video interview), and the earlier demo of the app nicely done by FreshDV.

By the way, interesting blogs with screenwriting news and in-depth analysis include John August and Mystery Man on Film (a doorway to more).

It will be interesting to see how Adobe joins Story to audio transcription features in Production Premium and if they acknowledge that there's already a market filled with script-oriented apps like Celtx (open source pre-production software), Final Draft, Gorilla, and others.